Charcoal Sketches
by Star1086
Summary: Olivia draws a face she doesn't know. Spoilers/speculation through TDWD through Neither Here Nor There, but honestly if you haven't seen either of those we'll never get a season 5.


A/N: This was dying on my laptop since the finale until I finally got around to uploading it. I pulled in some of the details that the premier gave us to finish it, so slight and HUGE!spoilers below so be warned. I really should be finishing Trapped, but I'm nothing if not a procrastinator. All feedback welcomed

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><p>There's something about charcoal she likes best; the grainy, chalky feeling between her fingertips as she presses the bar to the stark white paper to fill the space with dark streaks of shadowed outlines.<p>

The last few weeks were difficult to say the least, the newly formed bridge room they stumbled upon; the daily interactions with the red headed her that makes her flesh crawl; the prospect of newly discovered shapeshifters that's a horrible reminder of John and Charlie both (not to mention the track record she's recently acquired with male partners).

But the worst of it all is the unnerving feeling of loss that has nothing to do with any of them.

It was _him_. His face; his voice she swears she catches in the wind as it passes.

Somehow art pencils did little justice to the memory; the clean lines too well-defined, frustrating beyond belief when she tried to sketch him out the first time. Unable to get him to match the way he looked in her head: the slight dip of his chin, the way the lines sneak from his eyes like he's thinking of some nameless inside joke, the subtle fall of curled hair over his ears.

The first time she tried to put pencil to paper she'd crumpled it angrily into the trash and polished off a fifth of whisky in rebuttal.

Charcoal suited him much more appropriately. Every line smudges as she slides her hand over the paper, the unevenness of his features less overt over the crisp of paper: rubbing in the bridge of his nose that she somehow knows, the black line endlessly deep on his forehead that requires no shading at all. It's irritating and exhilarating all at once when she feels like she gets it right.

It took her weeks to map him out, piece by idiosyncratic piece that haunts her with its unrelenting presence. Like a dream she knows she's had but of which she can't remember details. The lurking presence of a sulking house cat frightened by the light; the name stuck on the tip of her tongue, trying to form into a name but the letters are all in the wrong language.

So every day for the last three months she draws him in the hopes of expelling him without the embarrassment of admitting someone else is tagging onto her thoughts now. Some nights it's his entire face, other times just his eyes or the curve of his mouth, and she's starting to feel a bit like Walter (she spent weeks just on his hands for god's sake).

If she's being completely honest with herself, it's a little more about the exorcism than recognition at this point, trying to rid herself of the fleetingly familiar features unknown to her. If she gets it down on paper _just right_, then the face, the hands, the glorious part in his mouth will all go away.

Secretly she doesn't want it to go away because she knows the mystery of him will remain unsolved. Mostly she wants to stamp her fingers in the image of him to pull him out of the lurking corners of the paper, from the nothingness that taunts her with his ridiculously quirked grin. She wants grip him hard and rake across the coals when it looks like he's telling her, "C'mon already."

The tips of her fingers are dipped in soot, small black lines under her nails as she glides them along the paper more out of habit than skill now, adding shadows along his jaw line as a substitute stubble when she's feeling particularly annalistic. She can almost feel the coarse sensation from touching it and it makes her stomach ache. His eyes are dark tonight, more charcoal than white space and she can't bring herself to smooth it out, to make it less distinct because she likes it. But something's wrong and she can't place it.

Fists curling into balls, black paw prints shadowing her palms and she suddenly has a feeling it's all so terribly wrong. The face that's smudged on the kitchen table looks up at her like it expects her to figure out her crazy herself.

She's off the chair stomping into the living room, feet thundering and heart pounding like if she doesn't hurry the fleeting image will blacken and curl up in a burst of flames. She scours through the tupperware box housing her meager art supplies, most of them Ella's she hadn't had the heart to throw away, tossing pencils and crayons in her wake. The anger courses through her unyielding as electricity and she dumps the entire box over, letting the contents spill out on the rug and digging through them on her hands a knees before she finds it:

The light blue piece of chalk sits like a drop of ocean against the foliage of soft plums and electric oranges on the backdrop of the rug. She takes it back with her, leaving the rejected Crayola on the floor without bothering to pick them up.

She presses the corner of the chalk into the eyes over the black, delicately tracing a fine dusting of color until it triggers something primal in her chest like a shotgun blast. The eyes looking up at her explode into a million beams of recognition: the eyes, the sly twisting smile, the nimble fingers, all of it, all at once. She half expects the name to crack up somewhere in the kitchen…but she doesn't hear it. It's the pieces of the puzzle all fitting together but the picture's face down and it she snaps.

The fury bubbles up and over at the sides until she's screaming, a low vicious snarl as her palms flatten against the paper to smear, swirling the dark lines together, trying to scratch off the piercing blue eyes of the figment of her imagination but it's not until everything goes blurry that she realizes she's crying.

Her hands are dipped in black before she can control her breathing enough to lift her shaking fingers away from the innocuous piece of paper that now lays ruined on the table. She swipes angrily at the wetness at her cheeks with the non blackened part of her hand, breaths coming out wet as rain. The picture is almost unrecognizable now; a gnarled ghostly figure remains where his face was moments before.

She folds the paper delicately, creasing its corners neatly until it's stamped with smudged finger prints. She carries what's left of the picture into her bedroom, dropping to the side of the bed to reach deep underneath to retrieve the black shoe box that hides from sight under the bed frame. She opens the box that's filled with the evidence her "side project". Hundreds sketches of him that she shares with no one. Some of the pictures are larger; folded roughly or balled to fit into the corners of the box, some smaller or shredded into pieces all together. Most of them crude lines when she was trying to get details down, the eraser marks still scarring the surface of the paper. She adds the new one to sit at the bottom of the piles of paper, pushing back the scraps that are threatening to tumble over the edges of the box. She smashes them down hard and rams the top back into place.

The box sits heavily on her lap, her back sore from the hardwood floor and her neck tight from clenching her jaw. She catches a glimpse of herself in the standing mirror at the corner of the room and she almost lets herself laugh. Her face is speckled in blackness, clean lines peaking out where she'd cried tunnels down her cheeks.

"I'm turning into Walter." She says with a self deprecation she recognizes from someplace distant.

She's returning the box to its hiding place when she catches the glimpse of a face just outside her peripheral. It's glimmering in the mirror and the box makes a thunking noise as it slips through her fingers, crashing to the ground and spilling the papers around her ankles. His mouth opens urgently but not a sound escapes.

Her heart thunders in her chest as she swivels around the room, trying to find the source of the reflection. By the time she makes it back to the mirror, he's gone.

There's nothing. No one. Just her.

She's trembling when she sinks onto the bed, hands clasped tightly over her mouth to keep herself from crying out. There's a new thought, a sudden revelation as the smell of charcoal lingers in the fibers of her skin. It's a name.

Peter.

Everything goes white-hot and not even her hands clamped over her mouth can keep her from screaming.


End file.
